Today is National Tooth Fairy Day

I was five.  The chair was enormous.  So was the dentist.  She was modelled on the Incredible Hulk, or he on her.  Pitiless, without compassion.  Clearly, didn’t like children.  I remember, as if it were yesterday. I sobbed and fought, as one huge hand shoved my chest back into the seat, while the other put something rubbery on my face. Then – blood and my mother dragging me home, deaf to my weeping. I’m in my seventies now, but the terror remains.  I didn’t even get to keep the tooth nor the penny from the fairy.  She was pitiless, too.